The Internet is a worldwide network of distributed computers that have the ability to communicate with each other. Because of the ease to communicate with another person halfway around the world, the Internet has gained widespread recognition as a viable communications network, especially for businesses. The easiest and most popular method of communicating with another individual over the Internet is through the use of electronic mail, or “e-mail.” To generate an e-mail message, the sender typically selects the recipient's e-mail address from a drop down list of available users. The sender then inputs a message he/she wishes to send to the recipient and forwards it onto an electronic message server at the sender's Internet Service Provider (“ISP”). The ISP then extracts the recipient's address from the e-mail message and forwards it onto the message server of the recipient's ISP, where it is stored until the recipient logs onto his or her Internet appliance and retrieves the e-mail message.
However, as unread e-mail messages sit on the recipient's message server, the e-mail messages age and their content may become outdated or obsolete by the time the recipient opens his or her e-mail messages. For example, an e-mail message inviting a person to a conference at 11:00 a.m. becomes obsolete if the recipient fails to read the e-mail message by 11:01 a.m. In this circumstance, it would be helpful to alter the content of the original message if the recipient does not open the e-mail message by a specified date and time. Allowing the dated material to remain unopened in the recipient's e-mail system not only wastes valuable resources, but also decreases the productivity of the recipient by cluttering his or her e-mail box with useless and obsolete messages. The recipient has no way of knowing which messages are obsolete and which message are relevant until they open each message.
In other instances, electronic coupons have become a popular method for retailers to advertise their products and increase sales. Typically, retailers send electronic coupons that have a sliding discount rate or become useless past the date of promotion. That is, the longer the recipient waits to open and to use the electronic coupon, the less the discount rate or potential for usage. For example, as an incentive to generate business, a retailer may send out an electronic coupon, which offers a discount rate 50% off the retail price of an item if the coupon is opened and used within one week of when it was sent. Once the week has passed, the discount rate may drop to 10%. Normally, the retailer would have to send out a second electronic coupon to those patrons that did not redeem the first electronic coupon within the first week. Unfortunately, sending multiple electronic coupons with varying discount rates is both costly and time consuming for the retailer and also consumes valuable computing resources. Additionally, sending multiple electronic coupons can irritate the customer. It would therefore, be more effective and less obtrusive to send out a single electronic message that contains both levels of the promotion and delivers only the promotion that is relevant at the time the message is read.
Typical methods of regulating e-mail messages are based on filtering e-mail messages received at the recipient's Internet appliance or message server. In these methods, the recipient establishes a rule set, which is stored on his or her message server or e-mail application. For instance, the recipient may establish rules to exclude all e-mail messages from a particular Internet address or all e-mail messages having a specific content. As an example, a filter may be set up on the message server to block all unsolicited messages, or “Spam,” that come from a known IP address. Although these methods regulate which e-mail messages are delivered to a particular user, these filter or blocking methods are set up by the recipient. These methods do not allow the sender to establish a rule set for determining how a recipient views the content based on when the recipient opens his or her e-mail message.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a method to deliver an e-mail message to a recipient over a distributed network, wherein the content of the message is based on how long the message remains unread after it is sent to the recipient's Internet appliance.